PVP gear on a tank = fail

Now the plate tankers who need the defense? Yeah, OK, you’ve got a point.

Not knowing your spec is lame.

Are you a member of “Elitest Jerks” cause you sound like the tank I was talking about in my post. The one that a kitty druid throwing only 2.5-3k damage can pull the aggro off you – you don’t have a clue. You can have the best gear score, best enhancements, best guild name – this doesn’t a good tank make you. This is the point of the excerise. Not the percentages of everything – the errors and stupidity is the focus.

Re-read Bigbearbutts request and shut up!

So during a guild 5 man run I switched to full dps gear and sword/board. The result? The run went extremely smooth. After that I started doing the same in complete pugs but letting the healer know ahead of time that I may take a bit higher damage. Never wiped, no healers complained and the runs were a lot faster. Warrior prot dps scales extremely well and I would average 8k+ dps on trash and 5k dps on bosses. For trash I would rotate shockwave for the stun and then use shield block for the mitigation resulting in taking very little damage while putting out an impressive amount. On bosses I would rotate tanking cd’s to ease the burden of the healer.

So yeah… I tank with 408 defense 30k health 25k armor around 20% avoidance and haven’t had a problem yet. Granted I pull intelligently and always keep an eye on healers mana/location. I’ve tanked everything including the new ICC heroics… and have started to tank ICC 25 trash in dps gear just to make the healers pay attention. In fact it was a druid tank that tanked in dps gear while I was healing in H HoR that inspired me to do the same on my warrior.

Now… I would never do this on my pally or DK… mainly because I have the gear and experience on my warrior to make things worth it. I stopped warning people that I was tanking in dps gear… I just monitor the incoming heals on the first few pulls to make sure the healer can handle things and then off we go.

Anyway… I found this to be the cure to crappy dps in 5 mans… since I can tank and dps at the same time. It becomes a balance between pushing out big numbers and surviving the incoming damage which makes things more fun for everyone involved… because lets face it… most healers actually want to heal instead of just following while afk.

i’ll be the first to call someone out for not having enough survival in their gear (be it avoidance or mitigation or EHP or most importantly the combination thereof) on their gear when they clearly don’t. however, when someone does have their survival, i won’t begrudge them their dps trinkets. it’s about making sure you have what it takes to survive all that you pull* without having to rely on an overgeared healer, and about knowing when you need to swap to a purely-survival focused set for the good of the group. i’ve seen some really fail raid-gear tanks, ran with them, the ones had survival problems due to lack of tank gear, or at very least lack of willingness to wear tank gear. i’ve also ran with tanks who mixed gear, with healers who dps half the time, but the good ones are the ones who know when you can get away with it due to massively outgearing the instances, and when you need to bring your full tanking or healing potential.

* pulling probably matters almost as much as gear, actually… willy-nilly fast pulling hurts survival, and pulling in a more deliberate way is a much safer proposition. ditto for simply pulling too many mobs. if you pull a boss with a trash pack, you are being a bad tank. no “might be,” you’re acting poorly. i don’t care if you outgear it, it’s just being a baddie, like standing in fire (unless fight mechanics demand you stand in fire).

P.S. my relationship with my shift key is a private one, and i’ll thank you for your discretion :D

If your gear set for tanking, even heroics, is DPS gear …you might be a bad tank. Period. If you have on DPS gear or (like a druid tank I had the other day) PVP gear – you fail. Totally and completely. No excuses as to how it might work if this and that. If you are going to tank, get tank gear or you fail. The druid tank in pvp gear the other day proved that beyond doubt. It is SO easy to get now, there is simply no excuse to try tanking without the right gear.

Oh, capital letters are your friend. Seriously. I can tell the shift key worked, because the acronyms were capitalized.

anyhow, here’s my request out there to any plate who wants to tank faster by using some amount of dps gear. first, throw your healer a glance. checking out mana pool, weapon, and shoulders typically gives a good rough idea of the amount of stress your healer can take, and adjust accordingly. it’s pretty easy to look at someone and see if they’re in mostly heroic drops, mostly badge gear, or mostly raid gear. tank trinkets to dps ones is a great first change, throwing on dps rings/amulets is also typically a pretty safe bet if it looks like your healer. remember, agility adds dodge and armor, so those will be better for you to switch to than strength ones usually. something like getting the two-piece bonuses for both dps and tank sets is also a good blend for an ICC geared tank. likewise, a few pvp pieces mixed in with solid tank gear helps damage without hurting survival much (caveat: tanking in full pvp gear is incredibly painful on healers, despite being crit immune… low avoidance really does that). when you have 40% avoidance, 35k hp, high 20ks armor, and your healer is in solid badge gear, it’s probably safe to be rocking only 500 defense. in-game equipment manager or outfitter or such can easily hold a lolhalfdpsgear tank set, and you can always switch back if it looks like your healer is struggling a little. basically, know your self and how much you need to survive well, get a read on the healer, and be willing to adjust depending on how stuff goes.

as to pulling without members, good judgment can go a long way. got two well-badged dps and a well-badge healer when you are a well-badge tank? you can probably just keep pulling trash if one of the dps has to get a phone call. if you’re a few pulls in and can check a dps meter, that’s also a great indication of when you can pull a little ordinary trash while waiting for someone to come back. if things are dying slowly, if you come to a boss, if you come to a nasty set of trash pulls, understand that it’s probably better to stop. again, experience and being rational about it can go a long way. pulling without a healer, however, is almost always bad.

i was dpsing forge of souls of all places, and the tank pulls the first caster pack while the healer is switching specs, so i guess that was the second pull without a heal-speced healer. anyhow, the shadow priest pulls shit halfway out of the fire with only like one dps death until the real healer can catch up… tank goes onward to the 2nd caster pull while the real healer is still gaining back mana from starting at zero then having to really lay on the high-mana heals to finish saving the day. offspec hybrid heals again keep things going for a little while the healer gets mana’d up and gets in range. things go great now that the healer is with us, but when he says he needs a quick afk, wouldn’t you know the tank pulls again… i have to say, nothing beats a really sharp hybrid for cleaning up after bad tanking, so kudos to all the shadow priests who see the light, the ele shaman who keep their heal spells on their bar and make the quick swap to earthliving weapon, and all the boomkin who break out the nourish spam when needed.